“Yes; but he says he can’t do anything for him.”
“Wha waits upon ’im, mem?”
“One of the maids and myself.”
“I’ll jist bide wi’ ’im.”
“That will be very kind of you.”
“I s’ bide wi’ ’im till I see ’im oot o’ this, ae w’y or ither,” added Malcolm, and sat down by the bedside of his poor distrustful friend. There Mrs Stewart left him.
The laird was wandering in the thorny thickets and slimy marshes which, haunted by the thousand mis-shapen horrors of delirium, beset the gates of life. That one so near the light, and slowly drifting into it, should lie tossing in hopeless darkness! Is it that the delirium falls, a veil of love, to hide other and more real terrors?
His eyes would now and then meet those of Malcolm, as they gazed tenderly upon him, but the living thing that looked out of the windows was darkened, and saw him not. Occasionally a word would fall from him, or a murmur of half-articulation float up, like the sound of a river of souls; but whether Malcolm heard, or only seemed to hear, something like this, he could not tell, for he could not be certain that he had not himself shaped the words by receiving the babble into the moulds of the laird’s customary thought and speech.
“I dinna ken whaur I cam frae!—I kenna whaur I’m gaein’ till. —Eh, gien he wad but come oot an’ shaw himsel’!—O Lord! tak the deevil aff o’ my puir back.—O Father o’ lichts! gar him tak the hump wi’ him. I hae nae fawvour for ’t, though it’s been my constant companion this mony a lang.”
But in general, he only moaned, and after the words thus heard or fashioned by Malcolm, lay silent and nearly still for an hour.